


Crayons

by notlucy



Series: The Brownstone in Brooklyn [5]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age Play, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Crafts, Daddy!Steve, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Food Issues, If You Squint - Freeform, Little!Bucky - Freeform, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Mummy!Peggy, Non-Sexual Age Play, Peggy Carter Lives, Protective Steve Rogers, Reading Aloud, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 15:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12135903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notlucy/pseuds/notlucy
Summary: Bucky and Peggy both have bad days. Coloring helps.





	Crayons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crockzilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crockzilla/gifts).



> Chronologically, this is the earliest story in this 'verse. As always: Peggy's in the future Because of Reasons.

Life had a funny way of turning out. Peggy found herself in the future with everything she’d dreamed of during the war: a good job (granted, she was a spy for an agency that had at one time been a front for Nazis), a home of her own (granted, it had been purchased for her by the middle-aged son of Howard Stark), a young man (granted, there were two of them), and a child (granted, said child was also one of her young men). Or, to put it plainly, she had one supersoldier and one formerly brainwashed enhanced assassin who was processing his trauma through a retinue of highly paid therapists alongside occasional bouts of what the Internet called age play. They were all still getting used to that.

All those things couldn’t prevent the occasional bad day, however. A day when Peggy felt she was losing the war. By the time she walked up the steps to the house that night, her head ached, and her feet hurt. She wanted nothing more than a tumbler of scotch and perhaps a long soak in the tub.

The house was surprisingly quiet when she walked into the foyer. That was always suspicious. But, she recalled, Steve was out with Sam tonight. Strange, though. Bucky was usually quick to greet her with a kiss and a cuddle.

She shrugged out of her coat, hanging it in the small cupboard before stepping out of her heels and flexing her toes in her stockings. Most women, she’d found, didn’t wear them anymore. Old habits died hard, though, despite the fact that she detested the things.

“Bucky?” she called, wondering for a moment whether he’d decided to go with Steve and Sam after all. He didn’t usually - didn’t like the crowds. But sometimes, when he was feeling especially brave, he’d venture out with them.

“I’m working,” came the response, Bucky’s voice pitched just a bit higher and brighter than it might have been otherwise.

Ah.

Peggy immediately felt guilty, wondering how long Bucky had been feeling Little without anyone there to help him. She and Steve could usually see the signs, but she supposed they’d been quite busy of late.

Still, couldn’t be helped. It had happened, and she was there now.

“What are you working on, my darling?” she asked, following the sound of Bucky’s voice. She found him in the den, sitting cross-legged on the rug with paper and crayons spread across the coffee table in front of him.

“Drawing,” Bucky replied. Peggy noted with some small measure of relief that he hadn’t gone into Steve’s art supplies for his tools - that was exactly the sort of thing Adult Bucky might have given Little Bucky permission to do before regressing.

“I see that.” Moving behind him, she touched a hand to the top of his head. He whimpered at the sensation, tension seeping out of his shoulders as he leaned his head against her hip. She worked her fingers through some of the knots in his hair, giving him a moment to settle. “Can you tell me about your drawing?”

“Yup,” he replied, voice quiet as he wrapped his right arm around her leg, clinging to her calf. “That’s you, that’s Daddy, that’s me.” The drawing in question had Peggy as a crude stick figure with brown hair, Steve the same, only blond, and Bucky as a little ball of black and red scrawled angrily on the page next to them.

Bucky’s doctors said the episodes of de-aging helped him process what had happened to him - that it was his way of showing vulnerability in return for unconditional love and security. So Peggy understood that everything she did while he was Little meant a thousand times more than it did when he was big. Still, it had taken some getting used to. She knew Steve thought she was a natural and he was the remedial student, but the new dynamic hadn’t been easy for her, either.

They were getting there, though.

“That’s quite an interesting interpretation, my love,” she murmured, continuing to stroke his hair as he sagged against her leg. Bucky was the most tactile and affectionate person she’d ever met, and when he was Little, he was undone by any small bit of affection. If she thought about why that was the case for too long, she knew her heart would break. “Mummy’s going to change her clothes, then she’ll help you draw. Would you like that?”

Looking up, he nodded, watching her closely, as though she might disappear on him again. Another pang of guilt struck her - he’d obviously been alone for some time.

The trouble was, she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him alone again, but at the same time, she couldn’t bear the thought of wearing her constricting clothing one damn moment longer. “Tell you what, Buck, why don’t you come upstairs with me and we’ll have a chat while I get changed?” (What was the point of a walk-in closet if you couldn’t keep up a conversation with your enhanced former assassin sweetheart when he was four?)

Bucky clung to that idea, as well as Peggy’s hand as they made their way upstairs. She gave him permission to wait on their bed while she went to change, sighing in blessed relief at finally getting out of her stockings.

“Did you have a nice day?” she asked, just to remind him she was there.

“Yes.”

The thing about Bucky when he was Little was that he wasn’t the most vocal child. Sometimes, in the right mood, he’d rabbit on for ages. But mostly he was sweet, quiet, and compliant.

“That’s wonderful.” A pair of flannel pajama pants that had been a gift from Steve (ever practical) alongside one of his well-worn sweaters seemed the way to go on such a chilly winter evening. She continued talking as she pulled them on. “Mummy missed you today.”

A pause, a shift. Hesitation. “You did?”

“Mmm,” she nodded, pausing to pull the comfortable sweater over her head. “Thought about you all day when I was stuck in meetings.”

“Yuck.”

Peggy was fairly sure he meant the meetings; at least, she hoped he did. She emerged from the closet and smiled at him, holding out her hand. “There, darling, all set. Come and let’s get mummy a drink and we’ll make a masterpiece together.”

She was still going to have her scotch, of course. She appreciated a Macallan, same as her father. If it was good enough for Harrison Carter, it was bloody well good enough for her.

“Can I have some?” Bucky asked when she opened the decanter.

(And sometimes, when he did things like that, Peggy was reminded that he wasn’t always so far away from his Big self - her sarcastic, crude, funny Bucky was in there, too. She privately hoped that some of it would eventually start to show when he was Little, instead of just the quiet, good boy who currently manifested.)

“One sip,” she replied. “Don’t tell your father.”

Bucky settled down a moment later, having taken his sip quite manfully. Peggy moved to the stereo, turning on some music all three of them liked - something slow and sweet that reminded them of a different time. After that, she settled on the floor next to Bucky and reached for some paper. Steve was the artist in the family, but she could hold her own. Bucky picked up another crayon and a fresh sheet as well, starting to draw a large brown circle. Peggy, meanwhile, attempted to do Bucky justice in a sketch, drawing a very crude version of how she imagined he might have looked when he was an actual four-year-old.

“Who’s that?” he asked after a while, pointing to her page.

Perhaps she hadn’t been as successful as she’d thought. “Ah, it’s supposed to be you, poppet.”

Bucky wrinkled his nose before peering closely at the paper. “...I look like that?”

He didn’t, not really. Not any more. But the Bucky she’d been attempting to draw was certainly the Bucky she and Steve wished he could be again. The Bucky on the page was the boy pulling bullies off Steve Rogers’ stubborn back, the dashing soldier in the pub, the voice of reason when Peggy and Steve decided to do something rash. Of course, Bucky was still all of those things, but he was something else, too. Something haunted, something guarded. Something that wasn’t quite for them.

“You do, darling.” Because how could she explain everything else to him?

Bucky made an indecipherable noise, swiping a hand across his nose. “Do Daddy now, please?” He never directly asked to change a subject, but he was a master at steering the conversation when he wanted to. Peggy abandoned her first drawing and pulled another piece of paper over to start working on what she hoped was a reasonable caricature of Steve.

“Is that a dog?” she asked eventually, peering at Bucky’s brown circle, which he’d embellished with four legs, ears, and a tail.

“Yes. It’s our dog,” he replied.

Huh. That was new. “I didn’t know we had a dog.”

“Uh huh. His name’s James.”

“He has the same name as you?”

Bucky shrugged, tongue sticking out between his teeth as he worked intently on the dog’s snout. Peggy was going to have to file that one away for later. Perhaps something to talk about with Steve? Or Bucky, when he was bigger? She was never quite sure.

They continued to draw in companionable silence until she heard the unmistakable growl of Bucky’s stomach. It struck her that it had been some time since she’d eaten as well, though as an adult she could take care of her own needs. Bucky couldn’t. (Wouldn’t?)

“Hungry, poppet?”

A glance down, a shrug, back to coloring. Bucky was terrible at asking for what he needed at any age, they’d found, tending to wait for something to be offered. That certainly didn’t make Peggy feel any better. As parents, she and Steve could be lacking.

“Bucky,” she tried again. “When did you last eat?”

Another shrug. He, like Steve, had the metabolism of a hummingbird and found it necessary to eat tens of thousands of calories to fuel himself. Which also meant _not_ eating could be incredibly detrimental.

“Darling, look at Mummy,” she said, a bit more firmly that time. Bucky hesitated before putting down his crayon and turning his head. “We need to eat something. What if I made us toasted cheese sandwiches?” Which meant one for her and ten for Bucky.

Bucky bit his lip, worrying it between his teeth for a moment or two. “You’ll burn them.” He said it so quietly she barely heard it. But he’d said it.

Peggy held back a laugh because he wasn’t wrong. She was a terrible cook, always had been. Bucky was the best of the three of them, in fact, though she wouldn’t let him near a stove while he was Little. Mostly she was thrilled that he’d chanced an opinion with her - an opinion that, if she were a different sort of person, she might have found insulting.

“I do burn them, don’t I?” she smiled. “What if we order from the diner instead?” They’d found an excellent local place that delivered, meaning that Peggy and Steve spent far too much money ordering as opposed to learning how to feed themselves. Bucky was just along for the ride.

He looked pleased with that idea, nodding and going back to his drawing. Peggy stood up to get the menu from the drawer in the kitchen, bringing it back and settling in to look over it with him. Five minutes later, she’d placed an order for a toasted cheese sandwich, two cheeseburgers with fries, chicken fingers, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, penne vodka, a whole cheesecake and two chocolate milkshakes.

The toasted cheese was for her. She might have a milkshake if she was feeling ambitious. Everything else was for Steve and Bucky to make their way through. They’d likely have demolished it all by the next evening.

The food would take some time to arrive, so they went back to coloring, though Peggy did take a moment to get Bucky some juice. She felt like a negligent parent once again when he gulped it down gratefully in three big swallows before she went to get him some more. (The thing about having a child like Bucky was that most _actual_ children were capable of asserting their needs very vocally, with tears and snot and screaming. Bucky would simply die of thirst before he ever asked.)

His latest drawing was a dramatic stick-figure reenactment of the incident in Siberia, including a rather disturbing tableau of Tony Stark holding Bucky’s arm over his head victoriously while Steve lay in what appeared to be a pool of blood. Peggy wasn’t one to question Bucky’s art, but that particular masterpiece was going to be hard to explain to guests if they displayed it on the fridge.

“That’s wonderful, darling,” she told him when he showed it to her.

“Tony’s bad at sharing,” was Bucky’s only response, before diving to hide between the coffee table and the couch when the doorbell rang.

“I think it’s just the food,” Peggy murmured, rubbing his back lightly. She stood, stretching a bit and going to get her bag so she could pay for the delivery and offer the man a generous tip. It was cold out, after all.

Bucky was dutiful when she returned, helping her get plates, utensils, and napkins for each of them. He even cleaned up his crayons when requested. They ate at the table, of course, because Peggy didn’t hold with eating meals on expensive, cream-colored furniture that could easily be stained.

(Napkin on the lap, elbows off the table. Didn’t matter if you were four or thirty-four, you behaved with decorum at Margaret Carter’s table.)

The cheeseburgers and one of the milkshakes disappeared inside Bucky, alongside a good portion of the meatloaf and half of the penne vodka. It was all devoured, in fact, before Peggy had finished her toasted cheese. Bucky had been starving, it seemed, and she berated herself for it. He brightened up considerably with food in him, and he was quick to help her tidy up after the meal, putting the leftovers into the fridge for Steve.

“What would you like to do now?” Peggy asked, forgetting for a moment that open-ended questions tended to send Bucky into a bit of a tailspin. She saw his face fall, and she quickly amended before he could dissolve entirely. “It’s nearly bedtime, so we can watch a film or read a book. Whichever one you like.”

Small choices were easier.

Bucky hesitated before disappearing into the library, returning with a worn copy of an Enid Blyton book Peggy had picked up at a used bookstore. She often found herself drawn to books published around the end of the war when she’d been trying to exist in a world without Steve and Bucky. It was before The Incident that brought her home to them, and reading books - especially children’s books - helped her feel connected to the era she’d lost through familiar words and places. The particular book Bucky was holding happened to be about an orphan girl named Fenella who went to live with her aunt and uncle at a circus, befriending monkeys and bears along the way.

There was also, Peggy had discovered when she’d first read it, a towheaded boy named Willie who became Fenella’s best friend. Willie was brave and rash and stubborn, with a need to prove himself to everyone. And if she saw Steve Rogers in him, well, she supposed Bucky might, too.

“Oh, that’s a nice one, darling,” she smiled. “I’ll get the fire going, and we’ll read in the den - why don’t you go and get your quilt?”

Bucky did as he was told, settling in on the couch with the patchwork quilt Peggy had made for his birthday the previous spring. Peggy, meanwhile, turned down the music, then got the fire going in the hearth (and didn’t she just bloody love how easy that was these days). After that, she settled in on the couch next to Bucky, taking the book from him before putting a pillow on her lap and patting it.

The quilt was wrapped tightly around Bucky’s frame, covering him from head to toe as he shifted and stretched himself out, settling his head on the pillow. She opened the book to the first page, then placed her free hand on his hair to stroke it gently as she read.

By the time Fenella met Willie and his pet goose, Cackles, Bucky had fallen asleep. Peggy closed the book, placing it on the side table and turning her attention to him. He looked different when he slept, without the weight of the world and all his sins on his shoulders. She twisted a lock of his dark hair around her finger, letting it fall back into place before affectionately touching his cheek, his lips, his nose. He was lovely. Both of her boys were.

The front door opened and shut, heralding the arrival of said other boy, who tromped into the house as delicately as a herd of elephants. Bucky stirred, though he didn’t wake, and Peggy wished she could shout at Steve to be quiet.

He figured it out soon enough, walking into the den to find the crayons, and the drawings, alongside Bucky, curled up to Peggy, wrapped up in the quilt that only ever came out when he was Little.

“Oh…” he said, surprised.

“Mmm,” Peggy agreed. “I think it must have happened just after you left.” She was speaking in that low voice she remembered her parents using when they thought she and Michael were asleep - the kind of voice one only develops as a parent.

“Damn,” Steve frowned. “By himself?”

“He seems to have recovered,” she replied, not wanting to burden Steve with the same guilt she’d carried. “Can you help me get him upstairs?”

Steve could, picking Bucky up with some effort and holding him fast. It ought to have been ridiculous, Peggy thought, the two of them with their hulking frames, Steve maneuvering Bucky up the staircase. Instead, it was sweet: intimate and perfect in ways she couldn’t entirely put her finger on. She followed them, pulling back the covers on their bed so Steve could set Bucky down in the center, rolling him a bit to get him out of his quilt and covering him up again with the duvet. (She folded the quilt and put it at the foot of the bed, of course, just in case he wanted it later.)

Bucky shifted in his sleep, turning onto his side. Peggy watched him for a moment before following Steve into the closet while he changed.

“Good night?” she asked, admiring the way his muscles moved as he stripped out of his shirt. She was fairly certain she would never get over the novelty of watching Steve Rogers undress.

“Sure,” he nodded. “Always a good night when Sam’s in town. Did you know they do karaoke in laundromats?”

“News to me,” she teased. “Did you participate?”

“No comment.”

“Is there video?”

“No comment.”

“I’ll text Sam for the evidence in the morning.” Peggy loved mobile phones, absolutely adored them.

Steve smiled, pulling on a pair of pajama pants. “And Buck?”

She sighed, knowing the man felt as guilty as she did, despite her earlier hopes of sparing him. Steve Rogers never passed up the chance to feel guilty. “I came home around half seven. He was coloring by himself. Seemed very happy to see me, very clingy. But we played, and he cheered right up - even expressed an actual contrary opinion about my cooking.”

“Really? So did you make him eat it?”

“Mmm,” she smirked, reaching over to swat at him. “There are leftovers from Daisy’s in the fridge.”

Steve seemed pleased, both about the leftovers and the fact that Bucky had expressed a desire while Little. It didn’t completely eliminate the feelings of guilt they carried about him having spent the first part of his evening alone, but it helped. As Steve pulled on a t-shirt to sleep in, Peggy made the switch from the sweater to a lighter shirt - still one of Steve’s, of course. He didn’t mind, and in fact took the opportunity to give her a few Very Adult kisses while she was shirtless. Quietly. So as not to wake the kid.

They’d calmed down considerably by the time they slipped into bed on either side of Bucky, who opened his eyes when Steve’s familiar weight jostled him. “Daddy?”

“Hey, pal,” he replied, his face lighting up.

Peggy knew, deep down, it was still hard for Steve - that he felt awkward and clumsy in his role. But he never let it show, not to Bucky, because Bucky needed this, and Steve needed Bucky.

“We gotta go to the circus,” Bucky murmured, still half-asleep.

“Yeah, okay,” Steve agreed, giving Peggy a look. “Go back to sleep, honey.”

Bucky nodded, though not before he attached himself to Steve like a barnacle, arms and legs wrapped around him, tucking himself tightly against Steve’s chest. Peggy was fine with that - both of her boys ran hot as furnaces, and on the few occasions she’d been the recipient of one of Bucky’s all night cuddles, she’d woken from a miserable night’s sleep, drenched in sweat.

So she gave Steve a smirk, stretching luxuriously before reaching over to turn out the light. She was sure he believed she hadn’t noticed him sticking his tongue out at her, but the thing about Peggy Carter was that she noticed everything that had to do with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. With any luck, she always would.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very much for reading! This is my first foray into NSAP, so I hope I did it justice. As usual, this one is for Crockzilla, who inspires all the little plot bunnies that live in my head. 
> 
> Also: if you were hoping for a _Proprietary Information_ update instead, that one will update on Thursday - it's taking me longer to edit the next chapter than I thought, and I want to get it just right.


End file.
